


Leave My Body

by bottleredhead



Series: i don't want your future, i don't need your past [1]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Reincarnation fic, There be angst here, a lot of angst okay, eventually, it's also canon? idek, there is cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-06
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-07 15:40:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/750189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bottleredhead/pseuds/bottleredhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He missed Camelot terribly, but not as much as he missed his Arthur. So he decided to not feel at all, and try (try being the keyword) to move on with his life.</p><p>(In which Arthur is dead, Merlin wishes he was and Morgana isn't inherently evil.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leave My Body

He supposed, in hindsight, that it would always be like this.  
  
Centuries of waiting and watching had done nothing but dim his spirits. His great Destiny (for it had taken a life of its own in his mind over the years) was to be thwarted by said Destiny, left undying and forever in this ever-changing, ever-evolving world.  
  
Albion, the great kingdom-to-be, had not come to be. Her future King lie at the bottom of a lake in a deep sleep, much like Sleeping Beauty. Arthur Pendragon, however, had no prince to kiss him awake.  
  
It could be argued that Merlin could be his prince, if only to wake him up. But Merlin was a warlock, and warlocks did not make for princes. (Well, he supposed so. He was never a prince, nor had he seen a warlock prince before.)  
  
It took him three centuries to realise that Arthur was never going to rise. Three centuries of Lake Avalon's shores, three centuries of staring into the heart of the lake waiting for a ripple, a movement that meant Arthur was rising. He hadn't given up after those three centuries - he just stopped letting himself hope.  
  
By the fourth century, he learned to stop feeling anything. He was tired of hurting and waiting and watching and getting nothing in return.  
  
He built himself a little cottage on the shores of Lake Avalon (more like magicked, but Merlin says it's the same thing).  
  
Later, when humanity encroached into forests and ripped trees out with their roots hanging to obtain land, he'd been forced to turn into Dragoon. No one payed attention to an old man as they did to a young one. He supposed his rather unkempt and frightful appearance kept anyone who was remotely intrigued by the old man at bay.  
  
For the longest time, Lake Avalon stayed unchanged, except for roads being built around it. No one really visited the lake though. Though they knew not what, the citizens of the area felt that something sinister, something horrible had happened there. How right their mortal minds were.  
  
Mortal...something Merlin was not. After Arthur's death, Merlin stayed at Lake Avalon. He's discovered after three weeks of foodless waiting that his magic could keep him alive indefinitely. After that, he forwent food, not minding the hollow ache in his belly that was easily silenced by magic.  
  
Merlin thanked God for small miracles.  
  
Because Merlin believed. He believed after all this time that there was a God, and that whatever Merlin was being punished for, he deserved. He mostly thought this was his hell for not stopping Mordred.  
  
For the longest time after the catastrophe that was Arthur's death, Merlin wondered why he never stopped Mordred. He knew it was Mordred by which's hand Arthur would die. He knew that Mordred would be the reason his world would come crashing down. He knew he knew he knew. Yet he chose to stop the battle, to save Camelot. (Was Camelot really saved without her King though? He often wondered at that too.)  
  
In the end, it was all in vain. Because no matter how well Queen Guinevere ruled, no matter how well her successor ruled from after her, Camelot eventually fell. Fell into battle, fell into disarray, into madness. It took time, but all the great kingdoms of Albion fell, giving way to a modern world that knew nothing of the old customs, of the existence of magic, of the once and future king.

Wars and plagues and disease struck the land. Lives were wasted because of the greed of men. Throughout it all, Merlin stayed by Arthur's proverbial side. (It was more like the lake's side really.)

He did, however, lend his magic to those in pain. During the droughts and famines he conjured food and prompted water to rise from the deep underground, willing it to nourish the people he felt obligated to protect in absence of their king, though even had he not died such an untimely death, he would not have ruled them. Merlin knew Arthur would feel responsible for these people, and therefore tried to do right by them. It was purely out of selfishness too, his care for the sick, the poor, the needy. He protected them for Arthur, not out of the goodness of his heart solely.

The twenty first century had come as a sort of surprise to him. He'd spent most of the centuries since Arthur's passing in a stoic, self-imposed isolation that left him even lonelier than ever.

He'd discovered that he indeed liked anthropology and literature and steaming cups of coffee from Starbucks. He'd spent the first half of the first decade of the second millennium studying and reading and travelling the world. He couldn't fathom why he hadn't done this before, when he'd so clearly given up on Arthur returning so long ago. Later, he thought that, for all his saying that he'd given up, a small spark of hope had lived on inside him. It took the Earth spinning into a new millenia for him to realise that wherever Arthur was, he was leaving anytime soon.

Despite being an antisocial hermit during all his years of waiting, he'd never been truly alone - and before you start spewing crap that Arthur's soul was looking after him from beyond the grave or some similar bullshit, let me tell you that it was another soul that kept Merlin company for a few years each century.

Because after he lost Arthur and all that he held dear, Merlin couldn't comprehend being all alone. If he had a chance to fix someone, you should be damned sure he was going to give it his all.

It came as a small surprise to himself when he recovered Morgana from the land of the in between. The high priestess was the reason he was to wait for Arthur, the reason his king was dead in the first place.

He wanted to hate her, at first when he realised he could save her. He wanted to let her rot in whatever hell she was surely in, wanted her to feel his pain. And it was this intense hatred, this darkness blooming inside him that prompted him to rescue her. For he knew, that if he had let her stay in her miserable death, he would mutate to become something ugly and hateful. And he couldn't let that happen; Arthur would be so disappointed if he let himself become twisted and malignant.

The ritual to bring her back was fairly easy for Merlin. A drop of blood from a dragon and the same blade that had been bathed by dragon blood that Morgana had been killed with. He'd had to locate her body and plunge the blade into her un-beating heart, all the while whispering the incantation that would revive her. He had to be extremely careful though - a mispronunciation and he'd become a necromancer, summoning but a shade of the powerful witch.

And revive, she did. She'd come back from the in between bruised and broken, both physically and emotionally. It seemed her trip to the lands underneath had not been pleasant. According to the markings he found on her person, she'd been tortured and forced into submission. The high priestesses of Old had not approved of her thwarting of the future of Albion. Apparently it was prophesied that under Arthur's reign, magic would be allowed in Camelot again.

For all his anger towards her, Merlin couldn't abandon her in her pitiful state. He nursed her wounds, took her into his humble home and made sure she recovered. It gave him a sick sense of satisfaction to see the woman that had cost him so much suffer, but he also couldn't help but pity her. They'd both lost so much, gained too little and destoryed so much.

It was weeks after her revival that Morgana finally recovered the ability to speak. In the dead of the night, when nary a cricket could be heard, she broke down in Merlin's arms, weeping tears of intense remorse. She apologised over and over and over until he words began to lose their meaning. He couldn't help it, but Merlin's heart broke for her and for himself and for all that they'd lost.

Wrapped up in each other, both with tear stricken faces, they stayed like that for hours, Merlin's magic rocking them slightly back and forth. They hadn't needed food, only seeking company - how was it possible to feel such coldness in their bones even when they sat huddled in front of a blazing fire?

Morgana stayed with him for two years after that. They'd both stayed well away from Camelot in that period. Morgana would definitely not be welcome and Merlin couldn't face Queen Guinevere and the healthy boy she gave birth to eight moths after Arthur's death.

Merlin could bring himself to visit Camelot only once, disguised as Dragoon. He stood from afar and watched his much beloved once-home as knights trotted past and townsfolk went about their lives. He'd visited Gaius, who was on his deathbed. Merlin had stayed with him that night, held his father-in-all-but-blood's hand and felt the life leave him through the night.

He had a glimpse of Arthur's son, a child of about three then. His hair was a golden halo around his head, eyes a bright sparkling blue, smile a familiar mischievous twist of his mouth. The boy was a spitting image of his father. And it almost made Merlin weep.

If you'd asked Merlin, he'd have denied knowing the boy's name, his existence, anything that happened in Camelot. But that was a terrible lie. Merlin knew all there was to know about the boy, from his name - Callum Arthur Pendragon - to his favourite past-time - fencing, of course - to every tiny detail about the prince-then-king. All the on-goings of Camelot had been known to Merlin, as well as how Gwen, Leon and Percival fared through the years.

He missed Camelot terribly, but not as much as he'd missed his Arthur. So he decided to not feel at all, and try ( _try_ being the keyword) to move on with his life.

**Author's Note:**

> So this just sort of typed itself. It's part of a 'verse though, and there will be more M/A interaction in the next one.
> 
> Work and series title from Leave My Body by Florence + the Machine - seriously, give it a listen if you haven't already.
> 
> Un-beta-ed (mostly because I don't have a beta).
> 
> Comments, kudos and bookmarks appreciated!


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